The 31-year-old, of Gwendoline Street in Toxteth, took his case to the Court of Appeal last week but failed to have his conviction overturned.

Although Mohammed pleaded not guilty after the incident in 2015, he was convicted after a jury heard of the victim’s distress in the moments afterwards, when he called a friend in hysterics.

The court heard the passenger got into Mohammed’s taxi in 2015 after a night out, and was drunk but “not so drunk that he did not know what he was doing.”

The man told police that Mohammed had initiated conversation, but the passenger could not hear from the back so was invited to climb into the front passenger seat.

Arthur Gibson, prosecuting, said: “The usual banter took a strange and what is clearly now a sinister turn, because the defendant started to ask him about his sexual orientation and came out with the question ‘do you like d***?’”